I am too tired to be writing, too tired to be clever, too tired to really be awake.
That said, I wanted to post a few thoughts on baby-having, that differ dramatically from How I Thought Things Would Be.
I looked in the mirror the morning after giving birth, gazed at my profile, and felt like a supermodel, baggy weird stretched-out belly and everything, because I felt that much thinner.
Then the milk came. Now I am from an A cup to a C cup, and I am WONDERWOMAN.
I gave the Ravenous Beast TALONS. Inadvertently, because her claws got trimmed inadvertently to points. She likes to poke herself in the eyeballs, and into my tender feeding mechanisms. So we had to clip this morning.
Our high horse trailed along forlornly after us for two weeks, when cloth diapers prevented the cord stump from drying out. So, we used disposables. For two weeks. Our trash TRIPLED. We pay by the bag here. Ouch. The doc sawed off her stump last Thursday, so by that evening, we started our cloth adventure. Wipes and diapers. I could go into the rationale, and argue with people who use disposables, but I shall summarize with: our room smells much nicer, I get to make dirty things clean again, and it is really not as hard as people would have you believe.
Newborns are like aliens. They don't get human for several weeks, I guess. Though her experimental expressions (mostly while attempting to figure out her plumbing) can be quite funny.
Pretty much all new babies look the same. I know she has my ears. The rest is a mystery, including eye color. I would recognize her in a crowd of newborns. But I don't expect anyone to exclaim, "What a cute baby!!!" because frankly, newborns are not that cute. They are very small, and they scream to indicate all levels of want and discomfort, with two levels: On and Off.
I always swore I would never, ever use baby talk. (But it is actually very difficult to speak to someone who gives no real responses, verbal or non.)
I always swore I would never NEVER refer to myself in the third person as Mama, Mommy, or anything else. (But for some reason, perhaps because others do it, or because I am trying to come to terms with my new role, or perhaps because it touches on some weird psychological link that perhaps it will be reassuring to the baby, it has been all too easy to do.) We have never sat down and decided what we want our child to call us. We better make that decision quick, before this weird behaviour gets engrained past the point of no return.
So, we invent what is essentially pseudo-IC for the baby. I suppose everyone must do it with their children. (Given that we as humans anthropomorphize just about everything, it stands to reason that we would be even more tempted with a tiny speechless human.) It seems that she has things to communicate. Why she can look so desperately unhappy when she cries, yet not smile yet voluntarily, is a mystery to me.
Sleep deprivation is funny. I find that my processes are very much slowed. I can't think of words, can't process speech, or comments. People say things, and my automatic cultural reflex to laugh, smile, nod...(whether things warrant it or not; it is a function of politeness, no?) is off. I just stare instead, or kind of chuckle blankly, or insert some transition word that transitions to absolutely nothing.
There is certainly more to share, but I have this sinking feeling that we have just hit the two week growth spurt. Maybe I should not even try to sleep tonight. So much homework to do...
